Whenever we embark on a well-intended endeavor to “do good,” a quick and easy check is to see if the means and the end are in integrity. This check will fail 100% of the time if the endeavor is based in duality, in either/or thinking, in, essentially, fixing division with division.

An example: While the feminist movement’s most fundamental premise is to honor and celebrate a woman’s choice, as soon as a woman perceived to have a “strong voice” or “privilege” chooses to not label herself a feminist or participate in all its agendas, she (largely) falls out of favor with her feminist fellow beings 🙂 (If she doesn’t appear to have a strong voice or privilege, then she of course doesn’t know better and must be educated 🙂 ) At the minimum her way of being disappoints or baffles them. (Unless she explicitly declares or acknowledges that she is still in “solidarity” with other women, and so forth.) (more…)

Indeed, persistence exists where resistance exists. And resistance to one’s persistence also persists! In a grand dance of endless cycles.

Imagine assistance!!

Yes, there is a dimension of existence where there is only assistance. Limitless assistance. From something way bigger and more expansive than the limited and limiting story, the narrative, the definition and identity of “self.” All one has to do is to gently surrender and release identification with the (hi)story, (while seeing, acknowledging and wholly feeling through its pain with Love and without blame). It’s a choice: Until we want the story, yes, persistence persists and resistance resists.

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“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” – William Faulkner

I have never before articulated this explicitly, but now feels like a good time. Perhaps it will assist some who wish for clarity and calm within.

When I created with women of color (including myself) for several years in Seattle’s Yoni ki Baat (YKB) project (inspired by Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues), my intention remained the same as it has been for any endeavor: Lift the frequency of human spirit (toward its natural return Home).

Shame is the emotion with the lowest frequency of vibration in the human energy field. It is next only to the frequency of death (i.e. the frequency at which the human body vibrates at the time of death). So, shame = death, and illuminating and embracing shame sparks life. One area in which the dense energy of shame is stuck and stored in the physical human body, is the womb (and related generally, to the subject of sexuality and its perversion). So, if the womb can lift itself out of the energy of shame, it can birth (itself and others) anew! By rejuvenating itself alone to a state of wholeness, it births humanity anew (starting with the Self), both physically and spiritually.(more…)

Sometime early last year it hit me. Duh! That’s what the term “gentleman” really means (or ought to, anyway)! No, no, not the idea that finally, the savage, brawny creature becomes cultured and cultivated, reigning in his natural instinct for rough-and-tumble and emerging the gentleman. And no, neither do I mean that the gentleman is someone who “is in touch with his feminine side.” Rather, I actually mean that gentleness is at the very core of every man. It is the true nature and true power of the masculine essence! (**Please see P.S. for a note on gender.)

I came to understand this not intellectually, but experientially, inspired by the profound influence of a singularly special man in my life. My phrase (and poem below) for the experience is Like Water to Earth — Water, the most powerful sculpting agent of Earth, all the while doing it with a softening, molding, cleansing, nourishing and life-giving power. Once I saw this, though, it somehow extended to become my all-encompassing view and understanding of all the wonderful men I have (had) in my life — as friends, partners, (partners of friends), brother- or father- or grandfather-figures, and in recent years, also several “son-figures.” (It seems that I am surrounded by and inevitably close to mothers with boys!) And also through the many incredible men who have contributed to the heArt work in publishing Courageous Creativity for over 4 years now — men who transform the world every single day with the extraordinary power of gentleness. (I can’t help giving a special shout out to Nipun Mehta!) Writing this post quickly in the heels of Father’s Day, I have to mention noticing (through social media) that many women appear to be experiencing and acknowledging this quality in the fathers of their children regardless of whether it “worked out” between them or not, (or are/were fortunate to experience it in their own fathers, like I too am now). One particularly beautiful phrase that stuck with me was about the power of fathering with “gentle strength and tender affection.” (more…)

As an ardent lover of Krishna and a fan of the sophisticated epic Mahabharata and its seminal core, The Bhagvad Gita, I’d spent most of my life dismissing the Ramayana as a decidedly lesser thing. Not only did it appear primitive in comparison, but it was also disturbing that its vacillating male God falls prey to his people’s questioning and ends up unfairly discarding his pure and faithful wife. It all seemed to smack of something gone terribly wrong, but rather than analyze it very much, I was content to conclude that even God Himself as Vishnu must have been evolving through his various human avatars, and that Rama was therefore, simply a lesser form than Krishna. (more…)

Personally having transcended constructs of identity, whether professional, vocational, social, cultural, or personal, and living in ‘creative being-ness,’ it is poignant that an opportunity presented itself, to reflect on the astitva of two extraordinary queens of history from the Indian subcontinent – poetess and saint Meerabai, and warrior queen Laxmibai – and their relevance to modern day existence. In its most rudimentary form, astitva is often taken to mean ‘identity.’ But, in truth the word has complex meanings from its Sanskrit lineage, also connoting ‘existence,’ ‘is-ness,’ ‘being-ness,’ and so on.